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**pastor's wife** · 01-11-2011, 09:49 AM

The stick on the fire: my husband and I went to camp sold out for God and really desiring to live for Him and lead our youth group to a closer walk with Him so we didn't feel we had any particular sin to give up nor did we feel that any particularly powerful messages had moved us specifically that week. It was a nice retreat but not life-changing, and we felt that going up to put our stick in would be hypocritical.

hac84 · 01-11-2011, 09:52 AM

(01-11-2011 09:24 AM)mounty Wrote:
(01-11-2011 09:18 AM)Arie Wrote:
(01-11-2011 08:44 AM)pastors wife Wrote: I also remember feeling guilty because my husband and I wouldn't throw our stick on the fire the first year.

Never been to the Wilds so could someone explain the 'stick in the fire' which I've heard referenced many times? Is it supposed to be after a week of hard preaching that the stick represents some sin in your life that your going to give up? Is everybody handed a stick at the beginning and you shouldn't leave the fire empty handed?

You got it, every last bit.

I remeber at another fundy camp, a counselor making a point to tell us the name for a short stick. (Maybe that was to get us to want to throw it in the fire more.) We used to call it "Testiphony Time" -- when 14 year olds told us of their deliverence from gangs and a $2000 a day heroin addiction.

Tony Mel · 01-11-2011, 10:51 AM

(01-11-2011 09:18 AM)Arie Wrote:
(01-11-2011 08:44 AM)pastors wife Wrote: I also remember feeling guilty because my husband and I wouldn't throw our stick on the fire the first year.

Never been to the Wilds so could someone explain the 'stick in the fire' which I've heard referenced many times? Is it supposed to be after a week of hard preaching that the stick represents some sin in your life that your going to give up? Is everybody handed a stick at the beginning and you shouldn't leave the fire empty handed?

There's really not much to explain about this except that it is a fire hazard, since it is held in the Activity Center (indoors). The kids are told to throw a stick (from a nearby bucket) if and only if they have no sin in their lives.

This encourages 3 things. 1) False theology of sinless perfection, 2) utter disbelief in the perfect righteousness of Christ gifted to us, and 3) hypocrisy and self-righteousness.

captain_solo · 01-11-2011, 10:52 AM

Imagine the shock and awe when recently my testimony to someone was that "because of God's incredible grace, I survived a fundy upbringing with genuine conversion and my spiritual life relatively intact..." more amazing than surviving a $2000 a day heroin addiction

mounty · 01-11-2011, 11:00 AM

(01-11-2011 10:51 AM)Tony Mel Wrote:
(01-11-2011 09:18 AM)Arie Wrote:
(01-11-2011 08:44 AM)pastors wife Wrote: I also remember feeling guilty because my husband and I wouldn't throw our stick on the fire the first year.

Never been to the Wilds so could someone explain the 'stick in the fire' which I've heard referenced many times? Is it supposed to be after a week of hard preaching that the stick represents some sin in your life that your going to give up? Is everybody handed a stick at the beginning and you shouldn't leave the fire empty handed?

There's really not much to explain about this except that it is a fire hazard, since it is held in the Activity Center (indoors). The kids are told to throw a stick (from a nearby bucket) if and only if they have no sin in their lives.

This encourages 3 things. 1) False theology of sinless perfection, 2) utter disbelief in the perfect righteousness of Christ gifted to us, and 3) hypocrisy and self-righteousness.

It's been a while ago but I always thought it was burning away the last of your sins and rededicating your life. I don't remember them being so Keswick about it...

Tony Mel · 01-11-2011, 11:35 AM

(01-11-2011 11:00 AM)mounty Wrote: It's been a while ago but I always thought it was burning away the last of your sins and rededicating your life. I don't remember them being so Keswick about it...

No, it's not about re-dedication anymore. At least not in 2009, when I worked there. They tell the campers to throw their stick in the fire only if every sin in their lives have been taken care of. This is supposedly done as a witness to the others.

mounty · 01-11-2011, 11:37 AM

(01-11-2011 11:35 AM)Tony Mel Wrote:
(01-11-2011 11:00 AM)mounty Wrote: It's been a while ago but I always thought it was burning away the last of your sins and rededicating your life. I don't remember them being so Keswick about it...

No, it's not about re-dedication anymore. At least not in 2009, when I worked there. They tell the campers to throw their stick in the fire only if every sin in their lives have been taken care of. This is supposedly done as a witness to the others.

That's...awful. And oddly self-defeating, since calling yourself sinless at any given point is in violation of Scripture, which means that throwing a stick in the fire is sinning. Sick, twisted, spiritual abuse.

**pastor's wife** · 01-11-2011, 11:47 AM

(01-11-2011 11:37 AM)mounty Wrote:
(01-11-2011 11:35 AM)Tony Mel Wrote:
(01-11-2011 11:00 AM)mounty Wrote: It's been a while ago but I always thought it was burning away the last of your sins and rededicating your life. I don't remember them being so Keswick about it...

No, it's not about re-dedication anymore. At least not in 2009, when I worked there. They tell the campers to throw their stick in the fire only if every sin in their lives have been taken care of. This is supposedly done as a witness to the others.

That's...awful. And oddly self-defeating, since calling yourself sinless at any given point is in violation of Scripture, which means that throwing a stick in the fire is sinning. Sick, twisted, spiritual abuse.

Yeah, that's AWFUL! An introverted perfectionist like myself would have been so horrified: as a "good girl" I would have felt obligated to put my stick in but as someone who tried to be nit-pickingly scrupulous, I would have felt unable to declare myself SINLESS. Arggghh. What a horrible feeling. I'm so glad I'm free now, and don't plan on ever being subjected to that again!! Or my kids either!

captain_solo · (This post was last modified: 01-11-2011 03:42 PM by captain_solo.)

Keswick, Oberlin, Wesleyan - same smell, slightly different approaches to the same heretical self-focused sanctification theology. Its not about what I do now, or what the spirit (aka, the high pressure biblical salesman in the pulpit) works in me today. If you don't start at the reality that in a real sense, I am sanctified, have been sanctified, whatever NT phrasing you want to use, then all the rest is just worthless empty human effort with no value at restraining the flesh or putting me in a right state with God.

All these movements/theologies are predicated on a second work of the Spirit - re-dedication, or reaching a higher plane of sinless perfection (at least when it comes to known sin) the victorious life, all that hogwash.

Of course, if I had reached the higher plane of sinless perfection myself I would agree with them...I think I'm just jealous

Apostrophil · 01-11-2011, 05:28 PM

Oh, the stick in the fire ceremony...there is so much pressure put on the campers to go with their whole cabin to the back of the building to prove that there is nothing between their souls and the Savior. A couple of times one of my campers refused to get up with the rest of us when it was our time to go to the back. So she sat there all alone, and everyone knew what a horrible rebel she was. Talk about peer pressure. =(

I hoped and wished every Friday night that I would be needed to counsel campers outside while everyone else was inside throwing sticks in the fire. I hated that service.